The trial of Donald Trump has finished its fifth week up in New York. Expectation from the legal pundits were that District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against the former president rested on one person alone: Michael Cohen. His testimony was a disaster, and the trial may end up sooner than expected. There could still be a conviction, but the whole affair has been so tawdry that like much of the rest of the LawFare campaign, it seems to have benefited Mr. Trump.

Speaking of other election issues elsewhere: there is also trouble over in the broad Pacific. France declared state of emergency for twelve days in its semi-autonomous Pacific territory of New Caledonia. There have been violent protests against trying to clean up the electoral system. There are five fatalities so far, two of them police. Hundreds more are injured. No word on Chinese involvement.

There is more immediate news. A pal is on a cross country this week and we hoped the road before safe and the driving sedate. He is pushing an ICE car, which we think is cool. The idea of attempting a fairly routine trip from Denver to DC in an electric car could return us to something like shiny wagon trains lined up at the new charging infrastructure that doesn’t exist. Make things rugged again.

The news about the debates yesterday had the messaging streams in an uproar, but of course there is more. The local news picked up the story of the oil barge that a bridge in Galveston, Texas. Authorities blew up the main span of the Key Bridge in Baltimore this week. People began to talk about who was going to pay to replace it.

Here’s a snapshot: Baltimore Key bridge span blown. Harbor costs unknown. $2 Billion to replace bridge. Fed or State bill?

The entire Interstate system (1954-94) cost $128 B, adjusted to 2024 at a little less than $300 B. Or the equivalent of giving two of the entire nation’s interstate transportation systems to UKR. We get numb to it, since the numbers, rounded only to the initial one, are very small. A Trillion? We talk about that all the time now. It is only three interstate systems…

Debates? This headline got saved on Tuesday:

“Biden Campaign Officially Turns Down the Presidential Debates Commission”

Matt Margolis wrote the piece that was subtitled:

The Biden campaign is officially abandoning the Presidential Debates Commission.

The sub-line was what the story was about, a departure from the Commission, not debates. The thrust of the article was that it represented a retreat on the President’s part. It was not. What we found out yesterday was more accurate. It was a calculated departure from any authority that could set the ground rules for the events, like crowd-size and third-party candidates like RFK. That transformed some of the decision-making timelines on the announcement of “two debates.” The Biden teleprompters have embarked on a bold course and harnessed left-wing moderators and other artificial framing tricks (Mikes shut down when not speaking, no crowd) that presumably the Commission would not have permitted.

President Trump accepted the offer quickly and with venom.

“Crooked Joe Biden is the worst debater I have ever faced — he can’t put two sentences together,” Mr. Trump asserted to Fox News. He has also assigned the President a nick-name, so the noise is rising.

We try to follow the messaging and this is interesting. It is a curious thing that the President’s strategists think they can have him on camera (without editing) for a full hour seems a little extreme. We saw a fifteen second clip in which there appeared to five edits. So, there may be debates scheduled, but we think something else is starting as well. There is talk the Democrat Chicago Convention could be cancelled. Pro-Hamas demonstrations are mentioned as disruptive and producing optics not helpful to the election.

There also is the possibility this is just to shut Trump up about debates until June. Then, Joe can have a “conflict” requiring immediate Presidential presence that precludes participation. Some think they also feel some desperation about the replacement candidate. There is only a rare chance of launching a new successful ticket even if a unified convention is still held amid Hamas riots in Chicago.

We batted around some of the options on what is actually happening. We came up with some calculus that indicates something radical might occur. Something that might result in a semi-plausible event intended to galvanize the polls.

But that gets close to some stuff that could get very ugly indeed. Maybe there will just be a debate that lasts a couple minutes.

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com